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But the matter cuts deeper than envy or hurt feelings. For it does nobody any favors when the nature of science is distorted in the public mind. Paleoanthropology is most emphatically not a business in which a single discovery in some exotic locale will magically answer all our questions--or even any of them. Indeed, the fun really begins only after discoveries have accumulated and we can begin to discern patterns among them.
The major disappointment, then, is that although these books will expose millions of people to some of paleoanthropology's most powerful ideas--albeit in an unreliable way--neither evokes in the slightest the intellectual challenge of a science that is central to the understanding of where we humans fit into nature. And neither even attempts to exploit the promising device of confronting human with almost human to explore the essence of our uniqueness as a species.
So what's the verdict? If you want reliable information about where our species came from, steer clear of these two books and consult any of the several very readable nonfiction works recently published on the subject. If you want to read a novel that uses a contemporary paleoanthropologist's discovery of thought-to-be-extinct-but-alive-after-all hominids to launch an ingenious and thoughtful exploration of what it means to be human, see if your local library or used-book store still has a copy of Vercors' You Shall Know Them, which was published back in the 1950s. If your tastes run to pulp fiction instead, either of these novels might make an adequate companion on a plane ride. If you choose Popescu, better make sure it's a long trip.
Ian Tattersall is chairman of the American Museum of Natural History's anthropology department. His most recent book is The Last Neanderthal (Macmillan; 1995).